Playful cleverness

History and Visions of New MediaIMKE 2007

Kaido Kikkas

This document uses the GNU Free Documentation License (v1.2 or newer).

Hacker...?

“My website was hacked, blah blah” Typical image in most mainstream media:

ingenious yet malicious hi-tech vandal There are constructive and knowledgeable people

calling themselves hackers too http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/

H/hacker.html Controversy?

Who to believe?

Those whose achievements range from clueless pranks to serious damage to other people (from Anonymous Dork to Kevin Mitnick)?

Or those who do not have any deeper knowledge about tech culture (most journalists)?

Or those who have built a great share of today's Internet infrastructure and left their distinct footprints into the history of technology (Stallman, Torvalds, Berners-Lee, Perens, de Raadt, de Icaza, Lerdorf and many others)

Definition in this lecture

a hacker is (mostly but not necessarily) a computer professional with innovative mindset and a passion for exploration

also a tech subculture deeply rooted in the history of technology

Hacker ethic worded by Raymond: "The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible."

The Forefathers: MIT

MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, founded 1946 The Signals & Power Subcommittee First computer science classes in 1959 (TX-0) PDP-1 in 1961 Project MAC in 1963 MIT AI Lab in 1970 Foundation of the culture

Recommended reading: Hackers by Steven Levy

No business

“Computer science” ~ “rocket science” Too few people to form a market Military undertones Software was machine-specific Also, management kept hackers apart from

managers and bookkeepers

=> Playful cleverness: original display of creativity unhindered by market motives

Subculture

Sharing culture (programming into a drawer) Non-standard use of technology (music, chess,

games like Spacewar) Specific jargon (-P, T/NIL, MU!) Hacking of Chinese food Puns and wordplay (“Government Property

- Do Not Duplicate” => “Government Duplicity - Do Not Propagate” (on keys)

Also: MIT hack tradition (see http://hacks.mit.edu)

The early Hacker Ethic

“1. Access to computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!”

"walk the walk, not only talk the talk"; a root of later hacker ethic

...

“2. All information should be free. “ Historical undertones (limited resources) – yet the

base of sharing in its many forms

...

“3. Mistrust authority – promote decentralization.”

Democracy rather than anarchy – it fights the misuse of authority, not authority as such

Decentralization has been a central feature of the Internet (and all network-based development) since its early days!

...

“4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.”

Equality! (Gender, education, race, worldview...) Peter Deutsch, 12 Gender- and color-blindness of hackers -

a positive effect of text-only network channels: all participants judged by the quality of their input, not their personal features! (suggested by the Jargon File)

...

“5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.” Not so evident in early days – MIT hackers were

the first to define computer aesthetics Ct. current WordPress slogan: “Code is poetry” Raymond's “points for style” - hackers

are no nerds at all?

...

“6. Computers can change your life for the better.”

New, non-traditional application (the ping-pong robot)

a root of today's free culture

Decline and rebirth

Early 80s: split in MIT AI Lab RMS, the Last of True Hackers (Levy) 1983 – GNU 1989/91 – GNU GPL 1991 – Linux 1992-93 *BSD ~1995 – LAMP and Red Hat 1996-97 - KDE & GNOME

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Set of essays by Eric S. Raymond, originally from 1997

Business reasoning of free models Open Source vs Free Software ESR as a colourful character Hacker-HOWTO:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Helped to develop a new generation of hacker

ethic

ESR: main criteria

attitude - "Do you identify with the goals and values of the hacker community?"

skills - "Do you speak code, fluently?" status - "Has a well-established member of the

hacker community ever called you a hacker?"

All three are needed to be a hacker!

Attitude points

The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved

No problem should ever have to be solved twice Boredom and drudgery are evil Freedom is good Attitude is no substitute for competence

Skill points

Learn how to program Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to

use and run it Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write

HTML If you don't have functional English, learn it

Status points

Write open-source software Help test and debug open-source software Publish useful information Help (to) keep the infrastructure working Serve the hacker culture itself

Points for style

Learn to write your native language well Read science fiction and go to science fiction

conventions Train in a martial-arts form Study an actual meditation discipline Learn to appreciate music, to play some

musical instrument or to sing Develop your appreciation of puns and

wordplay

Motivation

Linus' Law: survival social status fun

Ct. Wozniak's H = F3

Hackers of the new century

GNU, Linux, Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare... See: Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen, also other

writings of Himanen and Manuel Castells Medieval vs Protestant vs hacker ethic

Himanen on Hacker Ethic

Protestant Ethic money work flexibility goal orientation, result accountability optimality stability

Hacker Ethic passion freedom (hacker) work ethic (hacker) money ethic nethic (hacker network

ethic) caring creativity

Friday vs Sunday

Friday as the day of Crucifixion but also as the last day of working week

Sunday as the day of Resurrection but also as the day for rest and reflection

Estonian pühapäev – lit. 'sacred day' In which day do we live?

Conclusions

The hacker culture and hacker ethic do have respectable roots in history

From the mindset of a dedicated techno-elite into the hacker ethos of new millennium with a wide array of new ideas and possibilities

Might be the thinking model that our networked society really needs!